12 or 20 (second series) questions with Ken Taylor

Ken Taylor is the author of six books of poetry, three plays, and a collaboration with Ed Roberson titled found poem(s), a book of photography (Ken's) and poetry (Ed's) forthcoming from Corbett vs. Dempsey.  He is the founder of selva oscura press, which he edits with Fred Moten.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
self-portrait of joseph cornell was the result of reconnecting to poetry after about a 25-30 year hiatus and into a community that welcomed me (in Durham, NC). It was published when I was in my 50's by Pressed Wafer, which was run by the late Bill Corbett. Being published by Bill also connected me to a larger poetry community that revolved around New York City and New England. variations in the dream of X (just released by Black Square Editions) was actually started before my first book. It's the result of two different projects that had floundered over a couple of decades that seemed to find a way to work once I combined them.  When I wasn't writing poetry all those years, I was writing plays and even a couple of screenplays. This book borrows elements from both. The writing feels the same to me. The first was using a sonnet structure without having to think about form. The last was organizing different voices.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or nonfiction?
From what I can remember, I missed the bus one day in highschool and had to walk. I started to make up a song about being alone on a highway based on the rhythm of my breathing and strides.  I didn't start out to compose something. It just happened.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
I'm constantly taking notes which I eventually collage. I seem to have many false starts, but something sparks and then I see where I'd like to head. Some first drafts don't change much , but most do, some much more than others, or get put in a folder I've labeled "scrap exchange."

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
My poems start with a spark. I've written three chapbooks and three books. The first two chapbooks were more or less individual pieces that eventually were corralled under a title. The last chapbook and the full-length books have all been thought of as books from the beginning. That final form of what that book becomes has invariably changed from my initial take on the project.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I don't do a lot of readings, but I like doing them. It also helps me edit the poems. If I can't speak them easily, then something needs adjusting.
 
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
I can't really think in those terms without writing something that's crap.  I am however fascinated with some theoretical and scientific writing  as well as with philosophy.  And while I may not have the capacity to fully grasp what I'm reading, I find language that is useful to or excites me.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
Perspective? Presence? Articulating Questions?

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
It depends on the editor. I'm open to going with the best idea.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
"Never let a day go by." Jerry Jeff Walker

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (solo work to collaboration, poetry to photography)? What do you see as the appeal?
I gravitate to things I like. And that feels easy. And this is certainly not an original idea, but I think all work is collaborative.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I don't support myself with what I write, so I find time around work. Sometimes that's just taking notes all during the day. The weekends are typically more focused on writing. I feel I am at my writing best in the mornings.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
My writing doesn't seem to ever get stalled for too long, so I don't worry about it. I'm constantly reading other poets as well as other kinds of writing. Watching movies. Going to see art. To the theatre. Going on long walks that typically spark something.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
I was an Air Force brat. So my physical home changed. Both sides of my family are from Alabama (where I was born) and so I'd say honeysuckle and scuppernong conjure Alabama for me .

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
Books, art, music, science, movies, theatre, menus, signs, overheard conversations, the Voyager spacecrafts, cooking instructions, repair manuals, powerpoint presentations—you name it.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Too many to list. Ready go tos are folks from the Durham, NC community —Fred Moten, Nate Mackey, Joe Donahue, Pete Moore, Maggie Zurawski. Maggie Nelson always inspires me and her writing points me to many other writers. I also find inspiration from Susan Howe, Fanny Howe, Alice Notley, Ed Roberson, John Yau, Robert Duncan, Gertrude Stein, Eileen Myles, Robert Creeley, Amiri Baraka, John Ashbery, Anne Carson, and a bunch more folks.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Win Wimbledon. Act in a Coen Brothers' movie. Bowl 300. Play washboard in a zydeco band.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
Like I said, I don't support myself as a writer. Even at my age, I feel like there are still opportunities open to me. I'm learning more about photography. Would like to collaborate with musicians. Painters. Filmmakers.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
It's a compelling way for me to express myself.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I read a bunch of things at the same time. But what's been exciting to me lately is Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World, by Timothy Morton (an author/book I learned about from Maggie Nelson's On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint.) Collected Works by Lorine Niedecker.  Movies: Dogtooth, directed by Yorgos Lanithoms. Written by Lanthimos and Efthymis Filippou. Stalker, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. Written by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky.

20 - What are you currently working on?
Collage prose poems that all have the title wyoming.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Guy Birchard

Guy Birchard: I am by birth a deracinated Canadian: Don't panic, stalwart sons—no fault of mother's, no foul of father's—don't jump to conclusions, gentle maidens. Unfortunately for her aspirations for her Little Sausage, in me the proposed maternal alternative to Canadianismo did not take. Still, I was nineteen years of age before entirely confident I am not, however Anglo, British—and like so Canada continues upon us a judgment. The issue has been unremitting agon and zero-sum. Reason not the conundrum. 

Photo by Howard McCord in GB's Victoria apartment June 2010.

1 - How did your first book change your life? 
First books are some consolidation. 

How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different? 
Only Seemly (St. John's: Pedlar Press, 2019) is pendant to Hecatomb (Brooklyn: Pressed Wafer, 2017)—a "codicil"—alike in purpose, unlike in build.  

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction? 
I heard my first lines of poetry out of Danger Man reading Ernest Dowson in the double-agent's antiquarian bookshop, the speck of snaffled microfilm dotting the i of "wine and roses." You may laugh. Vitae summa brevis...

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes? 
A piece of poetry may germinate from impulse or notes. It then may develop by loblogic. It may want a long time, a very long time, to grow as it must. And, like the face in the mirror, once it fully emerges it might not much resemble its earliest self. "First thought, best thought," is giddy Ginsbergian nonsense: about how many things in this life in this world had you better think twice... 

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning? 
Anything seems possible. Further than the Blood (Boston: Pressed Wafer, 2010) is a compendium of single-page pieces; Hecatomb and Only Seemly, each according to the same motive, in succession required a hundred segments. Aggregate: retrospective (Bristol, UK: Shearsman Books, 2018) collects five long poems in-series; Cigarette Cards (Green River, Vermont: Longhouse, 2009) the shortest. And sweetest. 

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Anathema. 

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are? 
Am a pragmatic guy just wondering how to get away with it. 

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be? 
Not daring to speak for others, my objective is simply to provide something good to read. 

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)? 
By and large, in my small-press life, I have taken my own counsel, but twice, with Baby Grand (Ilderton: Brick/Nairn, 1979) and now with Only Seemly from Beth Follett's Pedlar Press, forty years apart, Stan Dragland hefted a lot of weight and helped immeasurably.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)? 
"Don't try to hold down a steady job."

"Don't rush to publish."

"Make no truce with the second-rate."

10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin? 
You will excite neither love nor poetry by routine. Start early, stay watchful. Luxuriate. 

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration? 
Understand convention is the enemy of imagination. Resort to patience, a cold eye and a cocked ear. 

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home? 
Tobacco.

13 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art? 
The female... 

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work? 
Forgive me forfending an endless, diverting, ultimately inadequate list... Reading is everything. 

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done? 
"You have used up the years and they have used up you, / and still, and still, you have not written the poem." Think about it: "Has gastado los años y te han gastado, / Y todavía no has escrito el poema." 

16 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer? 
To try art I threw over no successful career, trade, profession or prospect, abandoned no family; there was nothing else to do. 

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
A poem is a mystery to which it is pleasing never to come to a conclusion. Writing, I felt least hopeless.  

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film? 
Merrill Gilfillan's TALK ACROSS WATER, Stories Selected and New (Chicago: Flood Editions, 2019).

MORGAN: A SUITABLE CASE FOR TREATMENT, dir. Karel Reisz, 1966

19 - What are you currently working on?
Answering these thirty-two questions.

My pleasure...

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Guy Birchard, Hecatomb

Hecatomb sixty-six

drove impertinently blowing latitude

Nemesis munificently vouchsafed

boondock grids no-rooster-tail slow

admiring he her profile she horizon

till he goosed the accelerator guying

pronghorn in the way to mortifying flight

witnessed it clear bobwire on three stressed

legs one broke fore a’dangle faster ‘n hell how

magisterial adept stept panickt in badger sett

expulsion paradisal days demonic

alien hardship of the plains rapturous

pacific city tenure attaining purgatory

mnemonic her profile joy and absolution

After going through Guy Birchard’s Only Seemly (St. John’s NL: Pedlar Press, 2018) [see my review of such here], I was curious to go through some of his other work, and he was kind enough to send along a copy of Hecatomb (Brooklyn NY: Pressed Wafer, 2017), a collection of one hundred poems, numbered in reverse order. The “hecatomb” is said to come from Ancient Greece or Rome, and refers to a great public sacrifice, originally of a hundred oxen (“heca” = one hundred), suggesting that Hecatomb is composed as a sequence of losses or sacrifices, but one that moves through a sequence of tales from his own history and life, sacrifices as both to atone for, and those he had to work through, to get to where he has ended up.

Hecatomb three

Sacrifice is hard to know how

to make. Quiet defeats me

though I keep it. I rave. Nothing

so unseemly as an aging guy’s

anger, what once was his

glory and chance.

What becomes interesting is, in part, the stories that the poems suggest, infer and tell, however indirectly, for a poet who seems to put all into the work, and less so into biography, as the biography at the back of the collection includes: “After gleaning the poems themselves, what’s left of Birchard’s biography might better remain the preserve of honest privacy. Anne Heeney and he remain an item after forty-some years, which we mention as salute to her tenacious artistry. Senior’s Home address: Small Provincial Capital of Dreadful Night. A lay poet.” As with Only Seemly, as well, the poems in Hetacomb are equally evasive, slipping easily between direct memoir and abstract, writing poems that explore less a straight line than the points along it, allowing the reader to complete those connections. Given the nature of some of these stories, the poems feel less like losses or sacrifices, per se, than simply lessons he’s learned (or finally learned) over the years, despite the mantra of “Hecatomb thirty-six,” that includes:

Motive, theme: sine qua non. Only then dare start,

Falter, start over. Anticipating no conclusion. A hundred amends.

More. Deletion. Dilation. Heeding the sumptuary. In the end,

Doubt. Repeat. Ignoring exegetical itch. Exhaust the doubts.

Specious challenge, diction; structure, bona fide. (Or v. v.)

Such the frailty of the laity. Poetry is simply a taste and a practice.

Bespoke speech that stays spoke. No expatiation. Ecstatic.

“Consolation and exultation over imbecility, vanity, cupidity.”

What first caught my eye in this collection was “Hecatomb ninety-one,” a poem that speaks to his attachment to Ottawa literary history, including the former Pestelozzi College on Rideau Street and Commoners’ Press, both of which were run as communal and community enterprises [see my interview here with Neil Flowers on the anthology Northern Comfort, which was published by Commoners’ during the same period]. There are some fascinating stories and connections throughout this collection, from his Ottawa days (a reference to the Britannia Yacht Club) to travelling around New York, Bismark and Saskatchewan, as well as Vancouver stories, each of which suggest far much more. Given there is remarkably little information I can gather on him or his work online, but for entries upon the existence of his books, elements of his biography do exist as a thread through his poems, somehow concurrently less and more than other poets.

Hecatomb ninety-one

Back-when, Cam printed me “First

Sight”

at Commoners’ down at Pestalozzi

basement. (Juvenilia,

granted.)

Display of frisky eagerness and artless

ineptitude in boyish abandon.

(Risky

maneuver, for novice littérateur, true,

cack-handed, at that.)

Buoyant enough to mail a copy

to the still still-exiled resident of 8 Duke St, St. James’s,

baleful author of “Naked

Lust”

(notoriously retitled Lunch by hopped-up cap. T typist).

Who decently returned holograph p.c. (prized)

with thanks for “First

Sighs,”

and also advised,

Disguise as typical scene…

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Mark Lamoureux

Mark Lamoureux lives in New Haven, CT. His work has been published in print and online in Elderly, Denver Quarterly, Jacket, Jacket2, Fourteen Hills and many others.  He is the author of 4 full-length collections of poems It’ll Never Be Over For Me (Black Radish Books, 2016), 29 Cheeseburgers + 39 Years (Pressed Wafer, 2013), Spectre (Black Radish Books, 2010) and Astrometry Organon (BlazeVOX Books, 2008). In 2014 he received the 2nd annual Ping Pong Poetry award, selected by David Shapiro, for his poem “Summerhenge/Winterhenge.” He teaches at Housatonic Community College in Bridgeport, CT.

How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

Honestly, the only thing that happened for me with my first book was that I was relieved of the anxiety of worrying about publishing a book.  I think publishing can be sort of anticlimactic—we expect it to be this earth-shattering thing and it’s not really like that.  However, it is nice to have the work in the world physically in a form that is easy for people to access.  The books make their way into the world slowly, like glaciers; it’s difficult to see what the book accomplishes because it generally happens so slowly.  Of course, sometimes books get a lot of attention and a lot of hype very quickly, but this has never really been the case for me.

I tend to work mainly in the format of long projects, which provide a kind of scaffolding for my writing, so all of my books are very different from each other, both in style and content.  The only link between them, really, is that they were written by me.

How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

I definitely started with poetry in terms of a writing practice that I did on my own; we write non-fiction by way of essays and the like in school, but I never really surreptitiously wrote essays until much later in my career.  I think I wrote a few terrible short stories in high school but have not really written much of them since.  If I were to try to write fiction, however, it probably would not be very different from my poetry.  My most recent book incorporates a lot of non-fiction elements, but I would still probably call those parts poems.  I think the fiction / non-fiction dichotomy is difficult to establish in poetry. It’s not necessarily that clear all the time in prose either.

How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

My projects seem to develop at their own pace; I’m always starting projects—some of them come to fruition and some don’t.  My writing process is very improvisational—sometimes things will gestate in my head for a time, but oftentimes I just jot things down in a stream-of-consciousness way.  Then I make many small revisions generally over a long period of time, sometimes years.  I don’t take notes; I’m not sure I even know how I would do that.

Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

I never really compose with oral performance in mind; I am definitely an on-the-page poet.  I enjoy doing readings, but the process doesn’t come naturally.  I have to practice extensively in advance and keep to a pretty strict “set-list.”  My affect is pretty flat by nature, so I even have to “practice” emoting sometimes.  I express myself mainly through words on the page and not so much physically or verbally—it’s just the kind of person I am.

Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

I don’t really think about these things that much, to be honest.

What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

I think writers tend crystallize elements of the general consciousness of the world, albeit in a very personal way.  Poets, in particular, fulfill a role similar to that of the shaman—looking into a special frame of consciousness that surrounds and perforates us all but certain people seem to have a harder time accessing; the poet functions to help lead people into this space, where it is important to go because that’s where the universe does a lot of its thinking.  We don’t do this enough in the larger culture and we are feeling the adverse effects of it.  Hopefully when society realizes it needs poets again, it won’t have killed us all.  Extinction of the poets will probably mean the extinction of the race itself, though.

Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

I don’t work with outside editors.  Everyone needs a copyeditor because our brains are sometimes incapable of seeing our own typographical and grammatical mistakes.

What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

I try to avoid advice because I am deeply anti-authoritarian and I might therefore ignore some very good ideas.  It’s better for me to figure things out myself.

How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to translation)? What do you see as the appeal?

I love translation.  In translating one forms a very intimate bond with another mind and produces this special hybrid offspring—the joy in doing this is often greater than one’s own work because it is free of the self-loathing we often experience in regard to our own work.  Translating poetry is very similar to writing poetry, so it doesn’t require much of a mental shift—the hardest part is vocabulary, but otherwise it’s fairly intuitive.

Writing expository prose is completely different; it’s like swimming and walking, you’re still using your body but in an entirely different way.  The rules are different; the physics is different. 

What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

I abhor routines of all kinds.

When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

I usually write in response to things—music, images, situations, objects.  I don’t really get stalled because there’s no shortage of any of these things in the world.

What fragrance reminds you of home?

We live across the street from two famous and very busy apizza restaurants in New Haven, so on any given night the smell of pizza more or less permeates the whole area.  The word “apizza” was coined to differentiate the New Haven-style pizza from ordinary pizza.

David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

All of those things—really, all of them.  I think all good poetry is very curious about the world.  I wouldn’t say that books come from books at all.

What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

There are so many of them; it would be difficult for me to list them all. I think music is very important to me, both in my work and in my life, also visual art. I am listening to a lot of jazz right now, particularly Bill Evans and Clifford Brown.  I wrote a whole book responding to the work of Francesca Woodman and my current book is about songs and artists associated with the Northern Soul youth culture in Britain, so I guess you could say that all of these things are important to me.

What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

I would like to write genre fiction of some kind: a detective novel or a science fiction novel or something like that.  Something short though, like a Raymond Chandler or a Ray Bradbury novel, not these ghastly interminable epics that are popular right now.

If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

I wish I could be a musician, but I am really, really bad at music.  I think I have learning disabilities when it comes to numerical, orderly thinking and music is all numerical, orderly thinking.  Maybe that is why it is so magical to me. 

I am also a teacher and I think I probably would have wound up being a teacher even if I had not become a writer.  I love teaching, and it is the only sort of “job” that really makes sense to me.  Poetry was never any kind of decision I made, it’s just something I felt I had no choice but to do.  That sounds pretentious, but it’s true.

What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

I think all books are great in their own way, even the ones I can’t stand; I drive people with an innate critical bent crazy.  Hierarchical enumeration of the quality of art of any kind really gets me riled up. I recently attended a conference about Victorian Women Writers and really enjoyed a lot of the work I encountered there, which I had been unfamiliar with: Augusta Webster, Amy Levy, Mathilde Blind, Michael Field and others.  I’m probably motivated mostly by novelty; I like new things, even when they’re old new things. I recently read a biography of Bill Evans that I liked a lot.  I read a lot of comic books also, but they don’t tend to stand out from each other very much.

I feel the same way about films; I have my favorites, but I really just enjoy movies generally. I like horror movies a lot, but I haven’t seen any very good ones recently.  I watched a documentary about people who live in Antarctica during the winter season that I found really fascinating for some reason.  I showed Jane Campion’s Bright Star in my British Literature class this semester, so re-watched that a few times—it’s a really good poetry film among really only a handful of decent poetry films.  Ancillary to that, I also read Tom Clark’s Junkets on a Sad Planet about Keats’ life, which I enjoyed a great deal as well.

What are you currently working on?

I have been fiddling around with a manuscript called American Drone Doom, which is almost finished and about what it sounds like; drone doom is a style of heavy metal music, but it also refers to drones and doom generally.  I have also been writing poems in relation to/inspired by Leonard Nimoy’s old In Search Of television series from the ‘70s. That show really scared the hell out of me as a child; I’d run and hide in my room when that opening music came on, but now I love it.  It’s complete nonsense, but I love nonsense.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Laurie Duggan

Laurie Duggan grew up in Melbourne and over the years has lived in Sydney, Canberra and Brisbane. Since 2006 he has been living in a market town East Kent in the UK and is a regular reader on the London poetry circuit. Works include the documentary poem The Ash Range (2nd ed), Exeter, Shearsman, 2005; and a critical volume Ghost Nation: Imagined Space and Australian Visual Culture 1901-1939, Brisbane, University of Queensland Press, 2001.  His most recent books are Crab & Winkle, Exeter, Shearsman, 2009; The Epigrams of Martial (2nd ed), Boston, Pressed Wafer, 2010; Allotments [1-29], Wendell, Massachusetts, Fewer & Further, 2011; The Pursuit of Happiness, Bristol, Shearsman, 2012; and The Collected Blue Hills, Sydney, Puncher & Wattman 2012.  His blog is at: www.graveneymarsh.blogspot.com

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
I was 27 when my first book (East, 1976) came out. It was a small book and I’d edited out quite a few things that I’d keep if I were doing it now. I’d been writing for a while so it didn’t really change my life much. What did change things a lot was the first reading scene I was involved in, in 1968, at Monash University in Melbourne. The first book tried out a number of styles. I still tend to operate in different modes though I guess the most characteristic work I’ve done dates from my second book. It’s a more open-ended ‘continuous nerve movie’ sort of thing. For a long time I wrote satires and I’ve also written poems ‘including history’. I think I’ve just become more proficient, hopefully without becoming slick.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I started writing poems in 1966 but I still didn’t think of myself as a poet. I’d wanted to write fiction (for which I have no talent whatsoever – and these days not much interest either), I’d wanted to be a painter (I wasn’t any good at it), and I’d wanted to be a rock star (like just about every other male of my vintage. I still noodle on a guitar but I wouldn’t kid myself about it). So I sort of blundered into poetry, then everything else fell away and that was what I was.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
It varies from work to work. Some things require a great deal of revision, others seem fully formed, but these have usually been percolating away off the page for some time.

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
I always keep a notebook. Occasionally I’ve worked at projects but the parameters have usually been simple ones. It’s always fascinated me that fragments of ancient poems can seem more interesting and more alive than some completely available things.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I don’t think readings are as essential for me now as they were in the beginning but I like doing them and am a tolerably good performer. Readings are more of a social occasion for people who work in isolation.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
I function from doubt, if you could call that a theory. It means I can never satisfactorily justify or even explain what I do. At the same time I know what I don’t like.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
I always tend to avoid being grouped as a ‘writer’ with others involved in political actions. I do get involved in political events but as a citizen rather than as a poet. I don’t think poetry gives me (or anyone)any special kind of authority. In this I’m with George Oppen.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
With poetry the only editing done on my work centres on questions of layout and general page design. With any other kind of writing I welcome editorial assistance. Good editors are a rare and wonderful species.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
‘There are a lot of bastards out there’ (William Carlos Williams).

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?
I do move between these two genres. The relationship is indirect but ultimately fruitful.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
Sluggishly. I’m not terribly organised to start off with. But I do keep a notebook and keep it handy. So much of what I write in it is rubbish but if I didn’t do it I wouldn’t get the good things either.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I go for a long walk. Take photographs.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Eucalyptus after rain (Australia). Here (in Kent), malt from the local brewery.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
Just about every sort of experience enters the work. Including books.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
The list would be endless. Williams is always there. Oppen, increasingly so. Then there are my long-time companions (and compatriots) Pam Brown and Ken Bolton. But there are so many others.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Visit Portugal. And Chile.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
Everything I’ve done has, more or less, been by accident. I’ve been a number of things: a librarian, an academic, a cleaner, unemployed. It’s hard to say what else I might have done.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Pure chance.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
There are so many great books it’s hard to even begin. Most movies I tend to forget within days. I haven’t forgotten My Winnipeg though.

20 - What are you currently working on?
I won’t know until it’s finished.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;